Name: Gabor Schablitzki aka Robag Wruhme

Nationality: German
Occupation: Producer, DJ
Current Release: The Robag Wruhme EP Speicher 123 is out via Kompakt.
Recommendations:
1. "Bilder einer Ausstellung" by Mussorgsky in Tomita's electronic interpretation.
2. "Stationen einer Sucht" by Sandow

If you enjoyed this interview with Robag Wruhme and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.

For an interview with one of his recent collaborators, read our Stimming interview.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it? 


I started making music around 1991. Back then in a band. We called ourselves "Fog Forest" and were on an avant-garde trip like Sandow, Einstürzende Neubauten or Die Art.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

I think I've become a very critical listener over the years. There's a lot I don't like at all, and it's sometimes incomprehensible to me why certain music can become so popular.

I always analyze structures and levels in music. But fortunately there are still clever melodies that can convince me.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I've gotten more serious about producing music over the years, which gets on my nerves at times, but I've never followed a trend.

I miss the youthful lightness. But sometimes it can still be found in me.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I love music, I love what it can express and I love the moments when music forms a unit with the here and now.

What annoys me is that there is also a lot of crappy music and the good music needs to be found once more.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

In the mood for melody and rhythm. And the opportunity to have a release valve for life outside of music.

I think I would be a different person if I hadn't discovered the possibility of making music for myself.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Sometimes I think that the structure of music has been exhausted and everything has actually been said. Why else does it feel like every year that the new trend is just a rehash of something that was already there?

But music can evolve through technology and creativity. I'm waiting for the next new trend. For my part, I have made my contribution.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Making music is like painting, over the years I've found my colors. As technology evolved, I was able to refine them.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.


Serious? Haha ... OK! Here it comes: I get up at 6:00 every day during the week and make breakfast and the lunch boxes for the children. Then I take them to school and kindergarten.

I use the time until I have to pick them up again for organizational matters and work.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

No, I become a different person when I make music. Sometimes I don't check the history of a track myself when I come back to it after a long time.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Yes, I am an absolute loner. Because of the band, I quickly lost interest in making music "together".

Democratic processes in making music are very rarely possible.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

The world we live in has just become really shitty for many people. There are disputes on political and religious levels as well as wars all the time. It's about power and oppression, and it's about money. All characteristics that have been found in our scene for a long time. This personally annoys me immensely.

That's why I make music my place of well-being or of dealing with pain. And people do it in their own individual way. Imagine there wasn't a harmony, not a single rhythm!

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

When I'm listening to some really good music while traveling in the car in a breathtaking landscape with the right weather - I forget that I, and all of us, have only limited residency status on this planet.

For example, there was a situation when I was driving my car through the mountains of Switzerland. It was raining, the sky was grey like the mountains. I listened to Lisa Gerrard's "The Silver Tree".



Lisa's voice and the mountains were the same size. An indescribable feeling of humility and beauty. A perfect moment of life.

[Read our Lisa Gerrard interview]

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

Music is art, science takes on the art from time to time, but it is based on a purely rational level.

In the end, science doesn't really relate to music, and music doesn't relate to science. So in the purely emotional area.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

These are completely different processes. You can buy a coffee in a shop, but not an idea for a piece of music.

You may feel that a piece of music is good and that a cup of coffee tastes better. But then the music and the coffee already exist.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

The depth of feeling can only be defined by the listener of the music himself. And when this happens, a very personal feeling or image always vibrates in your head.

Therefore, I am deeply convinced that music is the soundtrack of OUR lives.